So, when it was announced that Netflix would be producing a live-action adaptation, you probably had the same question I did: why? Why take something that’s still cool and novel because it’s an Eastern, animated pastiche of Western, live-action cinematic tropes and redo it as a Western live-action production? What’s novel about that? In other words, Cowboy Bebop is an accessible anime to this day, both in terms of its content and availability. And if you want to stream it, you can buy it on Amazon or watch it with a subscription to Hulu, Funimation, or even Netflix themselves (they recently added it). A Blu-ray collection of all 26 episodes is readily purchasable for around thirty bucks. Not only that, a new viewer to Bebop today might very well find familiar parallels to modern productions, as there are now creators whose work is inspired by their growing up with the show (for example, Knives Out and Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson, whose first feature-length film Brickstars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a teenage detective heavily inspired by Bebop’s leading man).įurthermore, it’s not like Cowboy Bebop is lost media from the past. It feels familiar because, even if you haven’t seen any of the films Bebop takes direct inspiration from, you’ve almost certainly seen the conventions these films established pop up in other films and shows. Though animated and sci-fi-set in a dystopian future in which humans have colonized the planets and moons of our solar system- Bebop mostly cribs from classic cinema, primarily Westerns, noir, gangster, and kung-fu films. However, probably the main reason many people take to Cowboy Bebop so easily is that it speaks in tropes we’re all familiar with. Also, for English-speakers, the dub is so good it’s widely accepted as being as valid as the original Japanese. Yoko Kanno’s jazzy soundtrack swings so hard that people who don’t normally listen to jazz find themselves downloading the soundtrack (guilty!). The beautiful, high-quality animation looks as awesome now as it did when it premiered in 1998. The series was and remains a great gateway title for numerous reasons. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Cowboy Bebop, the anime directed by Shinichirō Watanabe, is what got me into anime. The anime ran for just 26 episodes and one special in the late 1990s and later had a feature film, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, released in 2001 and set during the series instead of serving as a follow-up.This article spoils much of Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation as well as the original anime series. RELATED: Cowboy Bebop & More Productions Heading to New Zealand Set against the backdrop of space in the year 2017, along for the ride are the brilliant, but weird, hacker Ed, and a super-genius Welsh Corgi named Ein. Among the crew is Spike Spiegel, a hero whose cool façade hides a dark and deadly past the pilot Jet, a bruiser of a brute who can’t wait to collect the next bounty and Faye Valentine, a femme fatale prone to breaking hearts and separating fools from their money. The live-action 10-episode series will be directed by Michael Katleman and Alex Garcia Lopez with Christopher Yost ( Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok) and Javier Grillo-Marxuach serving as writers.Ĭowboy Bebop first premiered in 1998 and tells the story of The Bebop crew, intergalactic loners who team up to track down fugitives and turn them in for cold hard cash. The series will star Cho ( Searching) as Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir ( Luke Cage) as Jet Black, Pineda ( Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) as Faye Valentine, Alex Hassell ( Suburbicon) as Vicious, and Elena Satine ( Revenge) as Julia.
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